Lewiston

The title track, "Lewiston" is, all at once, the most literal and the most metaphorical of all the songs in the project. After the Christmas break of my first year of law school, I flew back to north Idaho via the Lewiston airport. When we touched down, I decided I didn't want to head straight back to Moscow so I jumped in the red Sentra and I started driving around Lewiston. Lewiston, ID, sits on the banks of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers. On the other side of the Snake sits Clarkston, WA. The towns are connected by two bridges -- one old and one new. It's an interesting area really...two states, two towns, one community. While I was there, I drove up to a couple of stop lights and saw a few car loads of college-age girls. They were laughing, talking, and listening to music. I, on the other hand, was ruminating on old memories of past relationships. So, why is this song metaphorical AND literal? Well...it was a vision of sorts. It was happening and not really happening at the same time...the woman (in the song) wasn't really there...I didn't "[see her] dressed up in [her] fashions." etc. What I "saw", or envisioned, was a woman from my past in the cars next to me -- peering at me through the passenger windows in the rain that was falling that night. What I saw was the past and present colliding as I drove across the boundary bridge. "I'm driving 'cross that boundary bridge, lost just like a point, like the one I tried to make to you, we're two sides of a coin..." While the sides of a coin are part of the same object, they can never see each other eye to eye -- that's the "point" I was trying to make with that lyric. One relationship, one time, two different people; people who were too different. "I'm a stone...I'm sinking like a stone in Clearwater..." Here I tried to illustrate how I was feeling at the time while also making reference to the geography. I imagined myself -- sinking in the water -- yet being able to see everything going on around me becuase of the water's clarity. I'm not even going to try to explain the "gun in the glove-box" metaphor. It's suffice to say there are multiple interpretations -- most of which were intended and some of which were later realized. The ideas for production came from Golden Smog's "If I Only Had a Car" from the Weird Tales album. I wanted the song to be drenched in distortion and feedback with plenty of rock n' roll character. I wanted it to sound like the music I imagined was being played at the bars I drove past in Lewiston that night. The guitar solo is disgusting...in a good way. I played my yellow telecaster with a chrome slide through a preset on my 8-track. The result, after mastering, is borderline evil. "...of all the things we've said, there's just one...goodbye."